Poland indicts former spymaster over CIA renditions

Seven years after the Washington Post broke the story and amid ongoing European Parliament efforts to get to the truth, Poland has become the first EU country to indict one of its officials over CIA renditions.

Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza has revealed that on 10 January this year Polish prosecutors quietly started proceedings against the one-time head of the Polish secret service and former interior minister, Zbigniew Siemiatkowski.

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A map of alleged CIA rendition flights put together by the Council of Europe in 2007 (Photo: Council of Europe)

He is charged with false imprisonment for his purported role in creating a clandestine jail in north-west Poland, where the CIA held and possibly tortured terrorist suspects whom it snatched from their home countries outside any legal process.

Gazeta Wyborcza noted Siemiatkowski's secret service deputy, Andrzej Derlatka, is to face similar charges. Poland's prime minister at the time of the alleged CIA operations in 2001 to 2004, Leszek Miller - currently the head of a centre-left opposition party - is also said to be in the prosecutor's crosshairs.

The media revelations do not mean Poland will lift the lid on the CIA programme, however.

The Siemiatkowski process is to be carried out behind closed doors in Krakow, south Poland. The man himself has said he will not co-operate because the accusations concern state secrets.

Investigations in recent years by MEPs, by the Strasbourg-based human rights watchdog the Council of Europe and by NGOs have also accused Lithuania and Romania of hosting "black sites."

A European Parliament report in 2007 said the CIA carried out almost 1,250 rendition flights in Europe using airports in 14 member states, including Denmark, Germany, Italy and Spain.

When French Green MEP Helene Flautre on Tuesday (27 March) invited officials from Denmark, Lithuania, Poland and Romania to a hearing on the subject in the EU parliament in Brussels, nobody came, however.

The "most important" of the CIA's secret detention prisons in the years immediately following the 11 September attacks was in Poland, according to officers with the US intelligence service. Meanwhile, Amnesty International has issued a damning report on European governments' role in the matter.

A Lithuanian riding school has been named by a US news programme as the site of a secret location used by the US Central Intelligence Agency to interrogate individuals during the War on Terror. A government minister has denied the report as 'gossip' however.

The European Parliament's committee on CIA activities in Europe has called for sanctions to be imposed on member states which have condoned violation of human rights by US intelligence and slammed the EU council for "trying to lie" to parliamentarians.

German media outlet Correctiv, along with other newsrooms, have revealed how criminals annually cheat EU states out of billions in VAT fraud. The EU Commission says solutions exist - but member states refuse to budge on tax unanimity.